Join The British Museum For Museum From Home Amid COVID-19

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, people around the world continue to practice social distancing. This means people will have to stay home most of the time and avoid going outside if not for necessary purposes. Public places like museums or amusement parks were already closed to prevent the spread of the virus.

To keep people entertained during this time, the British Museum recently opened its online tour, offering people free visits. Thanks to the development of technology, the museum has uploaded 1.9 million paintings along with 4.5 million other artifacts on the Internet in high quality. Not only that, but people can also freely download these paintings for their personal purposes in accordance with the Creative Common 4.0 certificate.

The director of the museum, Hartwig Fischer said that the museum was delighted to deploy this project. It also hoped that these important artifacts could bring to people new inspiration or just helped everyone relaxed during this time.

Besides nearly 2 million artworks that are made available for non-profit purposes, the British Museum also launches a series of unique artifacts with many historical values.

According to the museum, even walk-in visitors are unlikely to have the opportunity to see these items.

In addition, the quality of the images posted on the Internet is so high that people can freely zoom in and out for a closer look. This is truly a wonderful gift for collectors and researchers who can’t go out to work because of COVID-19.

The British Museum has posted online a number of videos with lots of valuable artifacts. Among them is Game of Ur, an ancient form of board games of Mesopotamia from 5,000 years ago or the Hoa Hakananai’a sculpture from Easter Island.

In the next few weeks and months, the British Museum plans to continue to update its number of artifacts online. This collection is not only for entertainment purposes but it can also help people learn more about other major pandemics in human history.

A museum in Amsterdam has just uploaded online a scanned copy of the Night Watch of artist Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn. The image looks so detailed that you can even see on the hundred-year-old painting cracks that started appearing after many years. Thanks to this scan, we get to admire every aspect of the painting. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Rijkmuseum is temporarily closed. But with this technique, you can admire Rembrandt’s painting even when you can’t visit the museum.

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